What multiple of your monthly income would you sell your affiliate sites for?

[MichaelCorfman]

As affiliates we (hopefully) earn a decent amount of income most months. And hopefully that means our websites would be worth something if we ever wanted to sell them.

If you think about the average income earned by your websites each month, what multiple of that income would you want to receive to sell your site? Would you sell your sites for twelve times your monthly income (a years worth of income)? What about two, or three, or four or more years of income.

Besides voting in the poll, share the reasons for your thinking.

Michael

[RacingJim]

It's a very tricky question, the affiliate accounts built up, especially for larger affiliates, could equal an income for as long as those customers are alive which who knows, could be 20 years+, who knows how long this affiliate model will last though. Very difficult to value but I'd say at least 4 years for me personally.

[eenzoo]

Yes, its difficult ... if you just own one domain/project or your run some more and sell a part of.
Sold a BO website for monthly revenue x12 and i was happy with that deal. But it was just one of a lot.

[wonderpunter]

I would sell based on 3 years turn over not revenue.. most likely to a new sportsbook or betting site that wants instant convertible traffic that ranks in most top positions on gameday, they are the only ones that could see the potential and value along with the earning capability and are the most likely to have the kind of price that i would ask. my site differs a lot to other sites.. hence why i based it on turn over.

[golfbettingsystem]

could equal an income for as long as those customers are alive which who knows, could be 20 years+

This is the way I look at it too, unless there's a real (likely personal) reason to sell I'd carry on for as long as the market & model allowed.

The attrition rate from punters who genuinely want to use a bookmaker (and haven't been seduced by a one-off massive odds offer) is low enough to mean that provided that you're at least offsetting that rate with new accounts then I'd see little reason to sell. Of course the industry could change dramatically but that's part of the game I guess.

[PROFRBcom]

For Poker, I've noticed most people trying to get 12-24x. However, with the way the online poker industry is changing, I think it's too high a multiple for most types of sites / affiliate sheets (those with pros bolstering the revenue). An affiliate sheet and a site full of recreational players I think I'd value on the higher end of that scale and one heavy with pros on the lower end (or even less).

[Triple7]

I got an offer of 20 and I refused it. I guess 48 and it's sold.

[pinkytoe]

I'd consider paying up to 36 months for some sites, and wouldn't spend 6 months on others!

On that note - I'm also looking to buy casino sites

[sweetbet]

It's hard to say. I sold a site that made zero income for a few hundred dollars, and a site that made no more than a few hundred dollars of total income for $15k.

[Fiett]

Definitely a tricky one when it comes to selling - hard to put a monetary value on all the time and effort we spend on producing content and everything else to uplift it online.

In the past I've sold sites without selling the affiliate accounts. Proof has been provided of earnings to the buyer along with the AM contact too to verify for themselves. Just prefer to keep the legacy commission after the time it's taken to grow it!

[allfreechips]

A way I calculated to to remove the affiliate account side was to look at new depositors, and place into a cpa model of $150. Taking this i took all the new depositors for 12 months and came up with a percieved value of the site itself, not affiliate revenue. Then X2 for 2 years

[casinobonusguy]

I turned down 7 figures last year for my entire business ,it was alot of money but when I looked at my finances closely I was better off not selling.If I got a all cash offer I would take 5 years and we both know in this biz that won't happen so instead I sold off some small revenue stuff that was big headaches and restructured some things.

[TheGooner]

There is a big difference between revenue / income and profits.
I'd want 5-8 years x PROFITS from any sale - but that's because I have little intention to sell.

Do not want to buy most sites - but if I saw a great one then we would discuss many variables such as existing pages, special features, amount of traffic, and scale of PROFITS. Income wouldn't really come into it.

[MrBinaryAff]

Never sold any websites, but for me it's not only about the income from the project, but design/domain name/SEO/SMM/Content etc.

Reasonable price would be 18-24 months of income, but could be more depending on the other parameters I've mentioned.

Tried to sell my poker affiliate website for $600, when it brings roughly around $100 a month (but not very stable), but no one wanted to buy it, so I am keeping it to myself hehe. For other projects people made very cheap offers, so I never sold any...

[TravG]

I am surprised at the length many have on here. I have always heard 12 - 18 months which I always thought was a little low. The bad thing about what we are doing is we are at the mercy of Google and anything could change any minute however if a site has a solid history of earnings that are consistent or growing, I would think 2 years would be good. I think it should be more but I doubt you would find very many buyers willing to pay over 18 months of revenue, unfortunately.

[BBCasinos]

I always use an average of 3 times the years revenue. So when we do € 100.000 a year I want to have around € 300.000 for the total package.
This is pretty normal when you sell a company, a concept or a website.
But in the end your website is worth what a fool wants to pay for it

You can ask € 100.000, but in the end some fool has to be willing to pay that amount for it

[baldidiot]

If it's something we want to offload for whatever reason probably 12-18 months revenue, but without the aff accounts (or 12-18 months x the CPA rate it could have got maybe). We don't really sell sites very often though.

For a core site it would have to be 4/5 years before we'd even consider it. But even then probably wouldn't.

[betpro]

This is a question I was about to come on the forum and ask.

So this is my situation.

I've been affiliate marketing on 2 websites in Australia for 3 years.
1 Website is a start up I invested into, but have no active role and is under 12 months old which is making around $5,000 AUD per month revenue across all affiliates and the site is still only in BETA testing. This website is a new innovation which will be appearing on an investment television show in a few months time, which is a successful outcome for the business.

The second business has been alive since 2013, It's a sports tipping website which was born off the back of a huge profitable FREE Facebook page in 2012 which gatherered over 50,000 Facebook followers and inturn got over 3000 PAID subscribers to sign up to the website which was made in 2013.
For the first 3 months, I had no idea about affiliates, until I was approached. Now less than 3 years later, the business makes between $15,000-$35,000AUD in revenue per month on affiliates and about a 1/4 of that in subscriptions per month.

The thing is, After doing a bucket load of hard work from 2013-mid 2015, It's now basically running itself and I'm finding that I just have so much spare time on my hands, which I don't like. I basically only work 4 hours a day, 3-4 days a week, which is a good 40 hours a week less than what I use to do.
I like being active, working hard, having goals, targets and responsibilities. Now that I've achieved all this, I'm looking for a new challenge and I've actually been offered a really good role with a bookmaker, which obviously doesn't pay as well, but is still 6 figures, much more interesting and if I was to take the role, I would need to sell all affiliates I run as it's conflict of interest.

Now, on the other hand, I'm not going to take the role if I don't get what the website/affiliates are worth.

The hard thing is, How do you find someone willing to pay $1-1.5M AUD for the business?
Most people with this sort of money would have no time to be running a little tipping website I bootstrapped.

[TheGooner]

This is a question I was about to come on the forum and ask.

Gut feel is that 3,000 paid subscribers expect something significant - and unless you can automate this / hand it off to someone else - then it's not REALLY passive income yet - and can't easily be sold as a turn key business.

So a couple of questions arise ...

1/ If you are making $500K a year as your own boss in betting - why would you want to work for someone else for $100K or so?
You think bookmaking is that interesting that you'd lose $300-400K per year to do? Really?
My experience is having been your own boss ruins you as an employee ...


2/ What would be involved in automating / training others to run the existing sites so that it's passive income ?
If you can turn your existing sites into passive income then you could either
a/ Show that there is no conflict with your bookmaker / as you are not running the site only an owner ... or ...
b/ Demonstrate to a potential purchaser that the site is a turn key "cash machine" - not requiring time-in - so worth more ...

Business sales work best / get the best results when there is NOT a key person issue ...

[RacingJim]

Gut feel is that 3,000 paid subscribers expect something significant - and unless you can automate this / hand it off to someone else - then it's not REALLY passive income yet - and can't easily be sold as a turn key business.

So a couple of questions arise ...

1/ If you are making $500K a year as your own boss in betting - why would you want to work for someone else for $100K or so?
You think bookmaking is that interesting that you'd lose $300-400K per year to do? Really?
My experience is having been your own boss ruins you as an employee ...


2/ What would be involved in automating / training others to run the existing sites so that it's passive income ?
If you can turn your existing sites into passive income then you could either
a/ Show that there is no conflict with your bookmaker / as you are not running the site only an owner ... or ...
b/ Demonstrate to a potential purchaser that the site is a turn key "cash machine" - not requiring time-in - so worth more ...

Business sales work best / get the best results when there is NOT a key person issue ...

Spot on Gooner. Why would anyone, out of boredom, want to sell off a good, profitable business to go and work for someone else? I think that's strange. I also agree I'd be a right handful of an employee these days, especially in a similar type of business, I'd constantly be comparing it to when I could do things my own way.

My question would be, why don't you put your energy and efforts into scaling up what you do? If you've been successful in one niche, why not try and tap into another niche? or why not try to dominate the niche you are in? If you can make $500,000 a year, then you can make $1m a year. All that you need is more traffic and more signups. Scale is the key. I'd find that idea much more exciting than giving up cos I was bored of it and going working for a bookie.

If you'd said "hey I want to give up this game and go and run an ostrich farm in Northern Australia" then fair enough, but to stay in the bookie game and watch someone else make the money, I really couldn't do that.